I recently just bought a 1987 Daytona 250 that is need of some TLC, it has been sitting idle in the elements for over a year and not very well maintaned. I am currently in Okinawa Japan and bought it for about 11k with the currency exchange and for Okinawa that is a really good price for out here, boats can go usually go for twice their true value due to import costs and shipping costs for parts, etc. Anyway I will start to post some pictures soon, as I have just found this forum. I will use this forum as a personal log of my upgrades and hopefully gain some good support for my upcoming project.

As for the boat it has twin Mercruiser 180 engines, with Alpha 1 outdrives. It is missing the bimini top. For the cabin it only has the extended sofa/bed, no sit-at-table or space for a refigerator. The toilet/sink/shower does not work, yet. The hull is in decent shape it could use a new paint job (this winter). If you haven't heard of the 180 engines it is because they were only made in 1987. There weren't any electronics. Some of the wiring looked upgraded. The trims did not work, and I have no idea how many hours are on the engines.

I was able to take the boat out once after some shift-cable troubleshooting to get a short test drive in. I was only able to get the engines going to about 3k RPMs at WOT. I left with two engines running, came back with only one engine running. The port engine overheated due to a water pump seal in the engine failing and spilling out all the coolant. I later found out this is due to a design to prevent coolant from spilling into the engine, none the less, I am down one engine until I get the new parts in.

Here is the start of my project:

As for new parts I have ordered two completely new Alpha1 sterndrives, 2 new propellers, 2 complete sets of engine gaskets, electronics (Marine radio, stereo/speakers, Garmin 420 GPS/fish finder), 2 trim pumps and lines, 2 new shift cable kits, 4 hydraulic cylinders, 2 sets of transom seal kits, and various other mercruiser tools and seals. If I forgot anything I will mention it later.

I am considering new engines but I will wait and see how well this gets me up and going. The parts should start to arrive in about 10 days and I will post pictures of the progress (and Okinawa).

So far just the two Apha 1 outdrives both upper and lower. I found a hairline crack on the port side of the lower unit and it was slowly leaking oil. It looks like the previous owner must have hit something. I decided to just get the direct replacements and not to upgrade to Alpha 1 Gen 2 or Bravo's as I read that was just super expensive, plus the regular Alpha 1's will be around for a while and parts are not rare in supply, unlike my engines...

I thought about the manifolds and risers for my engines but it would cost about $1,000 for each kit. I want to see how well the engines do run to decide wether or not to place any more money into them or start planning/budgeting for engine upgrades. I have ordered about $1000 so far in refresher parts for the engines including tune-up kits, seals and gaskets, to at least get the engines in a steady running state for further evaluation.

I am by no means a mechanic of any type and I am very new to most of this. So I do appreciate any and all advice or lessons learned. I will try and post some pics this week.

Ok, I have finally got in most the parts that I have ordered. We started work on her yesterday and removed the outdrives, transom bellows and gimbal bearing and everything was in really bad condition. And the damaged water intake hose in the bottom picture is probably another reason why the engine overheated.

However once done with that we hit a slight road block at that point. There is a 'cartridge bearing' (aka - gimbal seal) just behind the gimbal bearings. All my research on the net didn't mention anything about this piece, however the Mercury maintenance book mentions when removing the gimbal bearing the 'cartridge bearing' behind it will probably be slightly damaged (which happened) and to replace that too. This piece has a rubber seal that is the last failsafe to keep water from coming into the boat in case the bellows are leaking, so since I have come this far I am not risking continuing until all is 100%. Back to placing orders and waiting...

Another slight problem I found was one of the trim sender switches didn't have its plastic cover on it causing the gimbal ring to carode in that spot and also one of the screws has broken off inside of it (bottom little hole). The hinge pin is corroded with 2 cracks in it. I hope we can get it out without too much effort. Because of this I have placed an order for a complete gimal ring and gimbal house as well as two sets of trim sender switches.

Today we continued work on the engine that overheated. We replaced the faulty waterpump gasket, as well as the oil side gasket too, all the other gaskets needed for the job were replaced. Everything went as planned for that, so at least one task off of the list.

Next thing to do is to replace all the spark plugs, wires and oil filter for both engines. I am thinking about doing a head gasket replacement because of the overheat, but that may just be too much work and I don't have any detailed instructions on how to do it. Any help here appreciated.

After that we will be replacing all the trim pumps, and I will be placing an order for new trim lines, the ones from the pumps to the outdrive didn't look so good either.

Yesterday and last night I continued work on the boat. I removed the old trim pumps and trim lines. The pumps took some time to get out. You really have to get down in there and luckily the screws didn't strip on me, however some took some work to remove.

After all that was done next thing to do was to remove the various screws that were sticking out in various places for seemingly unkown reasons, not fun. There were quite a few of them and some just wouldn't budge so had to use the plyers to slowly rotate them out of place. Next I wanted to remove the few pieces of wood that was quickly put into place to hold the old batteries in place. Man what a pain. For some of them I ended up using a saw to cut through the wood enough to use the plyers to rotate out the screws. I think just that part it took more than 2 hours and some curse words.

Now with most of the cables moved out of the way and all objects removed I moved onto to cleaning the very dirty inside.

I used a lot of 'Simple Green', a lot of elbow grease. I also was able to borrow a pressure washer from the marina which helped me clean out the unreachable places. After a few hours of cleaning, the water was finally running clear draining from boat. What a difference it made, but I hope not to do that anytime again soon.

I am thinking of just slapping on a quick coat of fresh paint, at least for now. This way I can really tell if the engines are leaking in other areas and catch a problem early on.

I spent last night and tonight sanding down the hand railing. I can't believe anyone would just paint over such beautiful wood. I already had a guy sand and oil the back ski deck, what a difference... It's a time consuming project, but hey, I got nothing else better to do with the boat until the new parts arrive...

Also last night we tried to remove the port side gimbal ring since it is slightly corroded (see pic from previous post) and I have orderd a nice replacement from Ebay for both the gimbal ring and gimbal bell housing. However I guess we didn't read ahead in the Mercruiser book to find out the only real way to take off the gimbal ring is to remove the engine which will put that project on hold for now. So the next best action to take is to just sand off the corrosion on the gimbal ring, level it out so it's flush and make a new screw hole for the trim sender, no big deal.

We were also unable to remove the gimbal bell housing on the port side due to the hinge pin being corroded and cracked. We applied heat around the hinge pin and tried a little bit to get it to move, but it was only making the cracks bigger in the hinge pin. Not sure if there is another way to get that out. I would like to get it off to do a better cleaning job on the gimbal housing before placing the new bellows on.

my transom assys. were just slightly worse then that(alphas)corrosion was a little worse...--i found used take-offs in great shape-(bravos) cant remember exactly how much i paid for them but i know it was less then half of the new price for bravos and about equal to what i would have paid for brand new alpha assys..

looks like you are really putting some hours in!! great job! keep it coming. i for one am definitly enjoying watching your progress-----much faster then mine.

Just rejoining the post after a work absence - great work you're doing - keep the posts coming. Where are you getting your mercruiser parts from? Ebay? A local company here in town ships worldwide - may want to check out their website - marinemanifold.com.

Your teak work - what oil are you using? Cetol seems to be the easiest to apply, lasts longer than teak oil, and looks great.

Cetol is a wood finish that was originally for residential finishes but has now been developed and used for the marine industry. It applies easily over old finishes and lasts a lot longer than traditional oils. See the attached link. http://www.yachtpaint.com/

Well I have been hard at work for both work and the boat. As for the boat I hit another engine problem, execpt this time it was on the starboard engine. One of the valve springs broke and then it bent a push rod and a valve. This is going to be a lot of work.

I go to pull off the head bolts, and as luck would have it, the last bolt broke while trying to remove it. I get the cylinder head removed, found all the broken pieces, luckily none of them fell into the block. Now to remove the bolt, which is maybe sticking out about 1/4 inch out of the block.

I go for the easy-out kit. I drill out a good size hole in the head bolt and proceed to use the easy out. Well more drama, the easy-out broke off inside the bolt. I spent 3 days trying to drill out the easy-out. By the time it was done I finally got the old bolt out but due to the nature of the drilling, most of the original threads were gone and the new head bolt would not hold torque.

Next thing I did is take a small electromagnetic drill press and bolted on a metal plate onto the block and proceeded to drill out the hole to the next size bigger. Taking my time and a lot of careful steps I was able to complete the drill, create new threading, inserted a keencert and now I have a good bolt hole for the head bolt.

I sent the cylinder head into a machine shop and ordered new valve springs, push rods (not easy to find) and valves. Now the big test was to put all this back together and hope the new head bolt holds the torque. All worked. With some timing adjustments I was able to start the engine and it seems to run a lot better than before.

All this above took well over months of parts research, some trial and error, and coordination with local help. I had pictures but they are lost due to my cell phone/water incident...

Yesterday I installed the GPS, transducer and VFH radio. I have a couple of bilge pumps on order and once I get them installed I will hopefully take the boat out for another test run. I really want to start on restoring the inside, before it gets too hot.

Weather has been in the low 70's with a slight wind chill at the marina. Okinawa is fair over all, the spring and fall being the best months. During the summer the humidity really gets you at 100%. But if you know how to beat the heat then overall it is a great place to be. I have been to Hawaii and while Hawaii may be first overall year-round in weather, however Okinawa I still think is a much better place to be and experience.

All, I haven't abandoned my boat, but rather have been delayed by being deployed for all year in 2008 and it looks like I will be gone for most of 2009.

I haven't made any significant progress, but as soon as I get back to Okinawa for a little bit I will continue to chip away at the boat.

Here is what I have done to date, I have installed the bilge pumps, took the carbs off for rebuilding. I have purchased new gagues, solar panel, and battery combiner. Also I have replaced the steering cable because the old one was pretty stripped. Before the carbs came off, I had the boat out and about a few days, steering felt solid for the first time and she ran as expected. I took the carbs off because coming into to dock the engines are still cutting out at idle speed and are still little hard to restart. I hope with the rebuild kits this may help, I will test and see.

This project is not forgetton. I have been deployed for most of the past year, but I have made some improvements for the short time I was home. I will soon get some pics uploaded... I have gotten her to sea, and most everything has been good, the last issue I was dealing with was the port engine overheating slightly. At cruising speed she didn't overheat, but at WOT the port engine was over heating. I since stripped down the engine and found that the exhaust manifold was erroded and leaking coolant. I ordered the parts to replace, but now I am deployed again to Africa and it will be a while before I am back to repair/replace the part.

awesome! love the look of all white!! i have been planing black from the rub rail to the water line but i think we just changed our mind!!-wife was sitting here admiring also! total differance. nice work and looking great! love watching your progress!

From the rub rail down, its a primer grey/white and black
for the bottom, but it is not bottom paint, I prefer to dry
dock. As for the paint type I will ask what type of paint he
is using and see if he can give me specific color types. I
think the top will be the same as the grey/white. I am still
deployed in Djibouti (East Africa) until April, so my marina
buddies are pretty much taking the lead (we have a tight
group). And of course they don't mind spending my
money... The guy who is painting the boat has been
hanging around our marina for many many years and is
just an independent contractor. He is Okinawan, very slow,
a little expensive, but his work is amazing.

Yes, we completely ripped out the old windows and replaced with plexi. The door as well is all plexi. It is nice to let in the additional sunlight, but very difficult to see in. I will take up close pics inside and out if you want.

How do I start a second page? I have many more pics to add, but this page is getting to long.

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